The production and quality control processes used by semiconductor device manufacturers and material producers often require a precise knowledge of such wafer characteristics, as flatness, thickness, resistivity, type, and orientation, among others. Automated, high throughput assembly line like wafer checking systems are employed to obtain the desired information. The wafers must be aligned about their centers, and their flats selectively oriented in space, before being fed to the selected wafer characterization stations of a particular wafer checking system.